Archive for July, 2011

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

The SUNY Geneseo Library is recruiting an Electronic Resources and Digital Scholarship Librarian. Degree: "Master's degree in information and/or library science from an ALA-accredited school or an ALA-approved foreign equivalent."

SUNY Geneseo seeks a service-oriented, versatile and dynamic librarian to provide leadership for organizing and accessing digital collections, serials, and providing knowledgebase maintenance, licensing, and usage analysis of resources. This librarian will also play an integral role in shaping and implementing the Library's vision to support the creation of and access to scholarly research and publishing, and provides leadership and technical expertise:

Plays a central role in developing digital collections and the provision of digital scholarship services, including the implementation and operation of tools to support e-research, teaching and learning, scholarly communications, and planning the development of a Digital Media Lab.

Ah, the public domain: Where creative work is supposed to wind up after a limited period during which the creator has exclusive control over distribution and copying. An ever-growing pool of literature, music, photography, video and art that we can use not only as inspiration but also as the direct basis for new works, annotating, deriving or just plain redistributing.

What a wonderful thing.

Too bad it's basically been frozen for quite a few years now, with almost nothing new entering the pool (except government publications—which start in the public domain) and things tagged with the Creative Commons CC0 license. Oh, and probably a few cases where a creator's been dead more than 70 years and has works produced since 1923.

Not only has it been frozen in the U.S., there are laws and treaties that would appear to shrink the public domain pool—which should, by any rational reading of the Constitution, be flatly unconstitutional.

The New York Public Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division (MSS) seeks an experienced archivist to lead its efforts to manage the Library's existing born digital archival holdings and expand its capacity to collect electronic records.

Under the direction of the Assistant Director for Archives and Manuscripts, the Digital Archivist will establish the Library's methods and procedures for the acquisition, preservation, description, and service of born digital archives and manuscripts.

James Grimmelmann reports that Michael Boni told US District Court Judge Denny Chin at the 7/19/11 status conference that the parties involved in the Google Books lawsuit "have been aiming for an opt-in settlement." The next status conference will occur on 9/15/11.

What that might mean is not obvious. It could mean an actual opt-in settlement, one that binds only class members who send in claim forms. It could mean a settlement in which Google commits to an open-ended offer to all class members. It could mean a narrower, scanning-and-searching-only settlement, so that copyright owners can "opt in" to book sales by striking their own individual deals with Google.

The Yale University Library is recruiting a Systems Programmer 1. Degree: "Bachelor's degree with five to eight years of experience in a computer related field or equivalent work experience and education."

Reporting to the Interim Director of Web, Desktop and Digital Services, the Systems Programmer directs the software planning, development and deployment, infrastructure planning, implementation and support of the Yale University Library's technical infrastructure. Degree: "Bachelor's degree with five to eight years of experience in a computer related field or equivalent work experience and education."

Responsible for providing high-level server administration and support for Windows servers, SQL database servers and Web servers, managing the production Active Directory and for support of Windows and Macintosh workstations and servers in classrooms, staff, and public areas, and leading in the discovery and use of new computer technologies used in the Library.

The aim of this white paper is to help universities and libraries implement policies and procedures in relation to e-journal archiving which can help support the move towards e-only provision of scholarly journals across the HE sector. The white paper is also contributing to complementary work JISC and other funders are commissioning on moving towards e-only provision of Journals.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library and Archives seeks an experienced Digital Project Archivist to join a team to catalog and to create metadata for two large archival collections. Experience with digitization projects and knowledge of copyright law as it pertains to the digitization of archival collections is preferred. This is a 15 month project.

The ACTA was motivated by a desire to establish equivalent provisions in international trade agreements containing rules on anti-counterfeiting. This is important at a time when free trade agreements are being negotiated by different parties. For the European Union it is also of importance to protect EU intellectual property rights (IPR) as future EU competitiveness depends on its ability to move into higher value added activities such as those for which IPRs are important. At the same time international agreements on IPRs will only be sustainable when they have the support of all parties. Within the EU the ACTA has also been the source of some concerns regarding the non-transparent way it was negotiated and whether it meets to aims agreed by the European Parliament and Commission that it would be compatible with the existing acquis communautaire and the World Trade Organisation's Trade Related Intellectual Property rights (TRIPs) Agreement.

Under the general direction of the University Library Information Technology Systems (ITS) Divisional Liaison, interacts with students, staff, faculty, and vendors, providing support for the University Library's integrated library system (ILS). Additionally, provides backup support for the primary systems administrator for all library servers.

Today, Amazon.com announced the launch of Kindle Textbook Rental—now students can save up to 80% off textbook list prices by renting from the Kindle Store. Tens of thousands of textbooks are available for the 2011 school year from leading textbook publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Students can find details about the program at www.amazon.com/kindletextbooks. . . .

Kindle Textbook Rental offers the ability to customize rental periods to any length between 30 and 360 days, so students only pay for the specific amount of time they need a book. Students can also easily extend any rental period in increments as small as one day or choose to purchase the book they are renting at any time.

The Assistant Director will take a lead role in bringing assigned digital projects from vision to implementation by planning, developing timelines, assessing progress, testing, and rollout. The Assistant Director will work closely with faculty and librarians and manage teams of specialists, programmers, students, and staff in projects initiated by A&S faculty. The position will require close collaboration with staff from other campus organizations such as the digital library team at Olin Library, staff in Information Systems & Technology, A&S departmental staff, etc. On certain projects, collaboration with other institutions will be important.

Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems.

Reporting to the Head of Digital Scholarship and Programs, develops, coordinates, and manages digital initiatives primarily focused on the special collections and specifically coordinates the operations of the Libraries' growing Oral History Program; works closely with the Libraries' special collections, Cataloging & Metadata Services, and Web and Emerging Technologies staff to ensure successful and sustainable implementation of oral histories and digital initiatives.

Featured Digital Scholarship Publications

DigitalKoans Overview

DigitalKoans provides news and commentary on digital copyright, digital curation, digital repository, open access, research data management, scholarly communication, and other digital information issues. From April 2005 through March 2016, DigitalKoans had over 13.4 million visitors, over 60.5 million file requests, and over 45.3 million page views. Excluding spiders, there were over 8 million visitors and over 19.8 million page views. It is available via e-mail, RSS feed, and Twitter.